KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. — First was the
British prime minister, who called Donald Trump “divisive, stupid and wrong.”
Then came Britain’s Parliament, which denounced him with colorful language. The
French prime minister, the Turkish president and a Saudi prince also weighed
in: The Republican presidential front-runner, they agreed, was a demagogue disgracing
the United States.

On Thursday, Pope Francis added the
strongest voice yet to a growing chorus of world leaders taking a stand against
the celebrity candidate — condemning Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda and
suggesting he was not a Christian because of it.

As the pontiff took the rare step of
injecting his views into the U.S. campaign, his remarks underscored the anxiety
coursing through world capitals about a possible Trump presidency. Francis
noted Trump’s promise to deport an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants
living in the United States illegally and make Mexico pay for a wall along the
border to keep them out.

“A person who thinks only about building walls
— wherever they may be — and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis
told reporters Thursday aboard the papal plane as he returned to Rome from a
visit to Mexico, according to a translation from the Associated Press.

“This is not in the Gospel,” he
added.

The Republican presidential
candidate heads to South Carolina after his win in the New Hampshire primary.

The pontiff’s remarks jolted the
Republican contest just two days before the crucial South Carolina primary,
immediately overshadowing the closing arguments the top candidates were making
on the campaign trail.

Trump, a Presbyterian, strongly
rebuked Francis for his comments, seeking to gain the upper hand politically in
a state where polls show him with a double-digit lead.

“For a religious leader to question
a person’s faith is disgraceful,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Kiawah
Island. “I’m proud to be a Christian, and as president I will not allow
Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened, unlike what is happening
now with our current president.”

Trump’s immigration positions have
been at the core of the billionaire mogul’s emotional and nativist pitch to
voters — and many of his supporters rallied to the candidate’s defense in the
face of the pontiff’s criticism.

As Trump sat down for lunch at
Fratello’s Italian Tavern in North Charleston, Mayor R. Keith Summey reassured
the candidate.

“I don’t care if he’s the pope or
not, you know, the bottom line is: Your faith is your faith,” said Summey, who
had just endorsed Trump. “I’m a Baptist, but I think there are some darn good
Catholics and darn good Jews, a lot of good people out there in this country,
and just because I say something they disagree with doesn’t mean that I have
any less faith than they have.”

Ahead of Saturday’s Republican
primary in South Carolina, the latest polling indicates a majority of
evangelical voters back Donald Trump, yet remain bitterly divided as many
question his stance on social issues ranging from abortion to gay marriage.
(Dalton Bennett/The Washington Post)

Trump listened as the mayor spoke,
pressing his lips together tightly, and then said, “It’s a very sad situation.”
Though minutes later, Trump told reporters he remained “totally respectful” of
the pope.

For Trump, who had been spending the
week on the defensive over his dramatic changes on social issues, Francis’s
comments helped him redirect attention to immigration. There also were
potential long-term risks for Trump’s candidacy, however, considering the
pontiff’s wide popularity across the country and the respect he commands.

“The pope was in Mexico,” he said at
his rally. “Do you know that? Does everyone know that? He said negative things
about me because the Mexican government convinced him that Trump is not a good
guy because I want to have a strong border, I want to stop illegal immigration,
I want to stop people from being killed.”

For generations, the role of the
papacy has been shaded by politics — and Francis’s papacy especially, with his
efforts on global climate change and general outspokenness. But it was striking
for him to comment on U.S. electoral politics during a campaign.

“He has a general duty to remind us
of our Christian obligations, but attaching them to politically partisan
proposals is unwise,” said John O’Sullivan, a historian of papal politics and
the president of the Danube Institute in Budapest. “ One has to question these
off-the-cuff remarks that make the pope look like someone who’s grinding an
ax.”

“The presidential campaign here is
of intense interest to the entire world, in no small part because people and
countries everywhere will be affected by our choice,” said Richard Haass,
president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Last month in London, after Trump
proposed temporarily banning all Muslims from entering the United States,
members of Parliament debated whether to ban Trump from
traveling to the United Kingdom. In the House of Commons, lawmakers described
him with a flurry of insults: an “idiot,” a “buffoon,” a “demagogue” and a
“wazzock.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron
had earlier called Trump’s travel ban on Muslims
“divisive, stupid and wrong.” And London Mayor Boris Johnson said that Trump
was “out of his mind” and “unfit” to be president.

“The only reason I wouldn’t visit
some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump,” Johnson said.

Similar condemnations have rained
down from around the globe. French Prime Minister Manuel Vals has accused Trump of “feeding hatred and
misinformation.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said of Trump’s Muslim ban that a “politician
shouldn’t talk like this.” And Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal took to Twitter to call Trump a “disgrace to
America.”

In South Carolina, however, Trump’s
“politically incorrect” statements and policy pronouncements have propelled him
to the pole position heading into Saturday’s primary. Many of his supporters on
Thursday scoffed at the pope’s comments.

Pam Ridgway, a 64-year-old retired
teacher from North Charleston who saw Trump eat lunch, said she was “really
surprised” by the pope’s comments.

“You can’t have a country unless you
have borders, and evidentially we can’t have borders if we don’t have the wall
because we’re not taking very good care of our borders,” said Ridgway, who said
she plans to vote for Trump. “And I think he’s a Christian, if he says he is.”

Later in the day at a Trump rally
event in Gaffney, Walter Lansford of Boiling Springs said that “Trump’s right”
in the spat with the pope.

“Even the liberals that we talk to,
they’re liberal to a point. They’re willing to let 13 million illegals stay
here, but they don’t want 150 million more to come,” said Lansford, 69. “So the
pope has his opinion, Trump has his. I don’t have a problem, I just support
everything Trump has said so far.”

Most of the other Republican
candidates handled Trump’s clash with Francis cautiously, giving a series of
non-answers that revealed their fear of inflaming either side, considering that
the political ramifications of the dispute were not immediately obvious.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said in
Easley, “That’s between Donald and the pope. I’m not going to get in the middle
of that, and I’ll leave it to the two of them to work out.”

Without directly responding to
Francis’s remarks, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) said the United States is a
sovereign country that has “a right to control who comes in, when they come in
and how they come in.”

“Vatican City controls who comes in,
when they come in and how they come in as a city-state,” Rubio, who is
Catholic, said during a stop in Anderson.

Campaigning in Columbia, former
Florida governor Jeb Bush, who is also Catholic, said it was improper for the
Holy Father to question Trump’s faith.

“I think his Christianity is between
him and his Creator,” Bush told reporters. “I don’t think we need to discuss
that.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich took a
different approach, however, heaping praise on Francis when asked about the
pope’s Trump critique.

“I love the pope,” Kasich said
following a campaign event in Clemson. “The pope, in terms of his overall
message has been one of love and compassion. . . . I’m not even sure I’m
qualified to criticize or comment on remarks from this man.”